When fighting erupted in Khartoum four months ago, the immediate horror at its impact on civilians was shadowed by a still greater fear – that the conflict between two warring generals might swiftly spread through the rest of Sudan, causing still more suffering, destabilising neighbours and, in particular, sparking fresh ethnic violence in Darfur.
Those fears swiftly came to pass: “We are not on the precipice of a human catastrophe, we are in the midst of one,” the international criminal court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, warned last month.
